Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity (2019), Confessions of a Recovering Engineer (2021), Escaping The Housing Trap (2024)
He graduated from Brainerd High School in 1991. Marohn received a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Minnesota.[1] In 2000 he became a licensed professional engineer (PE) in the state of Minnesota.
In 2015, he faced scrutiny by the state licensing board after an engineer from South Dakota reported Marohn for failing to renew his license in the mandated time frame, yet still calling himself a PE. Marohn admits to missing the license renewal deadline but acted quickly upon being made aware of the situation and addressed the oversight. Marohn viewed this action as a limitation upon his first amendment rights because of his critical statements made about the practices of traffic engineering, as well as his disapproval of civil engineers who he views as doing little to protect human life on roads.[8][needs update]
Marohn giving a lecture about Strong Towns in Seattle in 2016
Marohn started Strong Towns as a blog in 2008.[6] He was frustrated with projects he was working on that he believed were actively harming the places they were supposed to help.[6][2] As he gained readers, he realized there was a need for an organization that advocated the principles he espoused. Strong Towns became a nonprofit organization to "support a model of growth that allows America’s towns to become financially strong and resilient".[9]
Marohn believes that post-World War IIsuburban development has failed because it is inherently economically unsustainable.[10] He posits that low-density communities do not produce the tax revenue necessary to cover either their current services or the long-term costs of maintaining and replacing their services, and that suburbs are very difficult to adapt to an efficient, dense model because they were built as fully developed places.[7][10]
In 2011, he coined the word "stroad," a street/road hybrid, which has become popular among urbanists and planners.[11][12][13] According to Marohn, stroads are the "futon" of transportation alternatives. "Where a futon is an uncomfortable couch that also serves as an uncomfortable bed, a STROAD is an auto corridor that does not move cars efficiently while simultaneously providing little in the way of value capture."[7]
In late 2015, Marohn participated in a White House conference on rural placemaking.[7]
^ abcRoss, Jenna (October 8, 2014). Written at Brainerd, MN. "Looking to the Past to Re-Engineer U.S. Towns". Star Tribune. Minneapolis, MN. pp. A1, A6. Retrieved June 21, 2023. Marohn is gaining attention for taking aim at national issues: car-focused development, federal transportation funding and "gluttonous" infrastructure growth.
^ abKotlowitz, Alex (January 24, 2024). "The Suburbs Have Become a Ponzi Scheme". The Atlantic. Retrieved January 31, 2024. Charles Marohn, whom Herold describes as "a moderate white conservative from Minnesota," is the one to lay out Ferguson's decline to him. According to Herold, Marohn had a hand in building suburbs, but he has since had an awakening. Marohn suggests that what's happened in places such as Ferguson and Penn Hills is the equivalent of a Ponzi scheme.
^Sarah Goodyear (January 7, 2014). "Defining the Worst Type of Street Design". Bloomberg.com. Marohn says he coined the term in 2011 to wake up the people who design America's roads. "I really was writing it as a way to push back at the engineering profession and get my fellow engineers to think about the bizarre things they're building," says Marohn. That was why he initially wrote the word in that annoying all-cap style, which he eventually dropped.
